


You Could Have Avoided This

by Hoborg



Series: Martian Fruits [3]
Category: A Miracle of Science (Webcomic), Alan Mendelsohn the Boy from Mars - Daniel Pinkwater, Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga), XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crossover, Gen, ha ha only serious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 10:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14871645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoborg/pseuds/Hoborg
Summary: Clarence Yojimbo and Rolzup are not impressed with the Ethereals.





	You Could Have Avoided This

**Author's Note:**

> The author wasn’t terribly impressed with the Ethereals either.
> 
> These are the same variation on Pinkwater’s Martians that appear in “[The Puzzle of the Martian High Commissioner](/works/3604419).” If you want to know more about them, read “[A Miracle of Science](http://project-apollo.net/mos/)” and Ian McDonald’s _Desolation Road_ , as well as _Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars_. All named characters not listed in the character tags are OCs (except Dr. Shen, who is mentioned a few times but is never actually on stage).
> 
> I think it may not actually be possible in XCOM:EW to get Durand before the invaders attack your base, but I needed a named XCOM survivor with psi abilities, so the timeline has been rejiggered.

> Northeastern Iowa  
>  Universe 1525-Gollop-219  
>  CE 2015.05.04

Annette Durand and John “Central” Bradford staggered out of emergency escape tunnel G, just ahead of the dust from the demolition charges, blinking at the sun on the cornfields.

“That’s it, then,” Bradford said. “We’re the last.”

“Wait…Shen got out too,” Durand said. “With another engineer and one of the troopers from Beta squad, I didn’t ever get their names. They’re in sector four. I might be able to reach them with a few words.”

Bradford frowned. “Tell them we’re alive and we’re going to ground, but not where.”

Durand squeezed her eyes shut for a few moments. “I think they heard me. Where should we go? I don’t know this country.”

“Chicago. Hide in the crowd. We need to ditch these uniforms and find a vehicle.”

* * *

> Millennium Park, Chicago  
>  CE 2015.06.30

The Order of the Laughing Alligator rolled into Chicago on a balmy afternoon. They’d been making a grand tour of the local inhabited worlds—Mars, Titan, Spiegel, Trisolaris, Vulcan, Waka-Waka, and now back to Earth. After nearly a year of being extraterrestrial tourists and performers, it was good to be home.

But the streets were not as lively as they should be. The Order was not the flashiest motorcycle crew on Earth, but they should have been drawing more attention. They usually _did_ draw more attention, even here in Chicago, where they were regulars. In fact, there was hardly anyone out and about, and those who were seemed anxious and furtive, concentrating on their own business. It was starting to remind Clarence Yojimbo of Prague in the fall of 1968, and that was not a place and time he was pleased to be reminded of.

Gunnar Ramirez, the Order’s secretary, was frowning at his copy of the _Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_. “This isn’t our Earth,” he told Clarence quietly.

“Then whatever’s wrong here is our problem,” Clarence said. They all expected this to happen from time to time. The Interstate had taken them where they needed to be, not where they meant to go: it went with being masters of state twenty-six, tuned into the cosmic beat. Gunnar called it “player character syndrome,” though he’d never been able to make anyone else understand why.

Clarence let his eyes wander around the street. Apart from how everyone was behaving, it seemed pretty normal. The buildings were all where they should be, the businesses’ logos were familiar, the lake hadn’t seemed any more or less polluted than usual. “Whatever happened, it must have been recently. Look for a news stand, or a bookstore.” There wasn’t one of either on this block, but Clarence found himself unwilling to leave. His eyes kept wandering back to an alley entrance.

Gunnar had noticed the alley too. “I think there’s someone in there watching us,” he said.

“Mm.” Clarence stood still and extended his consciousness into the alleyway, encountering nothing relevant at first—garbage bins, rats, a fire escape, more garbage bins—aha! behind the second set of bins, two people, one of whom must have been somewhat tuned in herself, because she startled at the touch of his mind, hands grasping at a weapon that wasn’t there—

 _Easy_ , he sent. _I’m not here to hurt you._

Fear, confusion, a spark of hope. _They don’t talk like that. You’re not one of them. Who are you?_

_I don’t know who ‘they’ are. My name is Clarence Yojimbo. I’m the older of the two men wearing biker jackets. On Madison Street._

_The aliens! Who invaded! How do you not know them?_

_Would you believe we’re from a parallel universe?_

There was a long pause. Clarence thought the two people might be talking to each other, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

 _We need to talk_ , her voice came back to him, _but nowhere is safe._

 _Come with us,_ Clarence sent. _We’ll all go to Mars._

_MARS?!_

_Mars. In another parallel universe, where it’s been inhabited for thirty thousand years. The invaders cannot get to us there, and the Martian High Commissioner will want to hear your story too._

* * *

> Epiphany City, Noachis Terra, Mars  
>  Universe 259-KPSM-001  
>  AC 16027.14.33

Officially, there were two Martians in the conference room with Bradford and Durand and the Alligators. They both looked human, which made sense, Clarence had explained that this Mars had been settled from Earth. There was Rolzup, the High Commissioner, a small, cheerful but dignified woman; the only odd things about her were that she seemed a bit young for such a high position in government, and her voice, which had an eerie and attention-capturing (yet somehow also calming and reassuring) echo to it, as if she were a chorus. And there was her secretary, Alan Mendelsohn, an older and somewhat portly gentleman; nothing odd about his voice at all, just a slight accent. Brazilian, to Durand’s ears.

(João Teixeira, XCOM heavy weapons specialist, big and deadly and quiet. The exact kind of friend she’d wanted her first days at the base. Killed covering Shen’s escape route.)

But Durand’s psychic senses were telling her the mind called ‘Rolzup’ existed in _both_ of the Martians. Each also had its own consciousness that identified much more strongly with the body. Rolzup was in direct control of the body that had introduced herself as Rolzup, but she thought that was a temporary thing; the other mind could take over again if it wanted. In Alan’s body, the native consciousness was in control and Rolzup was just … there, listening. And there were still more minds present in both Martians, including one faint one that seemed impossibly large.

Rolzup was patiently and thoroughly going over the course of the invasion with Bradford. Alan would occasionally break in with a question, usually something to do with the aliens’ technology, or details of Earth’s history prior to the invasion. As Bradford was finishing with one of those (what possible relevance did the length of the Boston Red Sox’s infamous losing streak have?) Durand decided she had to know.

“Excuse me,” she said directly to Rolzup, “but please explain why both of you are multiple minds in one body. It is disturbingly similar to something I noticed about the aliens.”

“Mars is a fractal collective consciousness,” Rolzup said. “Every Martian citizen has their own individual identity but we also all participate in the whole, and in intermediate groupings of our choice, centered on a role or a craft or a field of scholarship. I am one of those, the collective will of all the Martians who concern themselves with foreign policy. Several other collectives—concerned with history, technology, xenobiology, military strategy—are also present and Alan has been relaying their questions.”

“Let’s exchange roles, to demonstrate?” Alan said.

Rolzup nodded; her irises lightened and her voice lost the eerie echo. “Now my name is Honda Tohru; I am the individual consciousness born into this body. I am still participating in the collective mind of Rolzup, though, and they are still aware of everything this body perceives.”

Alan’s eyes darkened the same degree, and his voice took on the same echo. “And now my name is Rolzup, because I am the collective mind speaking directly, but Alan is still present and aware of everything this body perceives, and he can return to the forefront any time he wants.”

Durand couldn’t help but stare at both of them. “That is really not much like the invaders’ group mind at all,” she said finally. “They seemed to be just one mind in control of a few dozen bodies.”

“Can you tell us what you know about that?” Alan-now-Rolzup said. “I assume these bodies are not the ones doing the actual fighting, or are they?”

“No, we think we’ve never met the leader aliens face to face,” Bradford said.

“I was captured—they took a lot of people captive,” Durand said. “They did medical tests on us, I think they want to understand our biology in detail, but more important, they discovered I’m a telepath—I always thought I was just good at reading people, but no, I can actually hear other people’s thoughts, and they did something to my brain that made it a lot easier. And then the leaders talked to me psychically. The Ethereal Ones, they call themselves. They were pleased to have found someone with as much psi ability as I apparently have, and they wanted me to become part of their group mind. They didn’t understand why I didn’t like the idea—I think they’ve been a group mind so long that individual identity doesn’t make sense to them anymore. They think of themselves as plural, but really there’s only one consciousness.”

“Yes, this was a problem for us a long time ago, at the beginning of our experiments with collective consciousness,” Rolzup said. “It’s more likely to happen in small groups. You said you thought there were only a few dozen Ethereal Ones?”

“In the group talking to me, yes. All of them who had come to Earth. It might be all of them anywhere. And I know that they’re very old—thousands of years, at least—and there’s something they’re terrified of, something that they believe they _must_ stop, or prevent, no matter what it takes. But I don’t know what that is.”

Tohru held up a hand. “If there are only that many of them anywhere, their species is on the precipice of extinction, no matter how long-lived they are. Could that be what they fear?”

“Maybe? It seemed more concrete and immediate than that, but I really didn’t get much. They avoid thinking about it.”

“Understandable.”

Rolzup frowned. “Mars has never in its history encountered any of the species you have given us physical descriptions of, and we’re pretty sure we haven’t encountered these Ethereals either. This means we can’t move immediately. We need to find out more about them first, or we’re just going to make the situation even worse.”

“How is that possible?” Bradford asked. “Clarence said you had explored the entire galaxy.”

“We’ve explored _our_ entire galaxy,” Rolzup said. “And the entire counterpart galaxy of a few hundred closely-related parallel universes, such as Clarence’s home universe. But there are an infinite number of parallel universes, even if we only count the ones in which Mutter’s Spiral exists and contains intelligent life. We just haven’t gotten to any of the branches in which the Ethereals or their client species exist, yet.”

“We can still get back, though, I hope?”

“Not to worry,” Gunnar said, holding up the _Hitchhiker’s Guide_. “The Guide automatically logged the route.”

“Would you please upload that?” Tohru said. Gunnar poked at the Guide for a moment, then nodded.

“We have enough to start an investigation now,” Rolzup said. “We should have more to discuss in a few days. Meanwhile, I’ve arranged rooms for all of you at the Hotel Monolith, on the riverfront. Please make yourselves at home here, get some rest, do some sight-seeing. Ms. Durand, would you be willing to have us scan your brain and find out what they did to it? That should give us some more clues, and if it’s going to cause problems for you later, we should be able to fix it. There’s a neurology clinic right down the block.”

“I would like to know, yes,” Durand said. “Central, will you come along? To have a familiar face.”

“Of course,” Bradford said.

“I’ll come too and make sure you don’t get lost,” Tohru said.

* * *

> three days later

Alan Mendelsohn met Bradford, Durand, and the Alligators in Rolzup’s outer office, along with Tohru and another man of about Alan’s age. “This is my husband, Leonard Neeble,” he said. “The three of us will be working with you to resolve the situation on your Earth. Please follow me.”

They all filed back into the conference room and took seats. Leonard spoke first. “We’ve been examining the invaders’ history, and we know why they came to Earth and what they want.”

Above the center of the conference table, a hologram snapped into view, projecting a fairly ordinary-looking spiral galaxy. “This is your timeline’s version of our galaxy. Sol is here.” The projection zoomed in on one spiral arm, and one star of the millions grew a little yellow flag. “The Ethereals’ home star system is here,” another star some dozens of light-years away grew a little green flag, “and they’ve explored this region.” A blobby region roughly centered on the green star became shaded in green, with Sol at one edge. “Only a few hundred stars. They haven’t discovered the ansible, so they can only visit one solar system at a time or their group mind would come apart. And yes, Ms. Durand, as you suspected, the fifty-odd Ethereals who came to Earth are the entire surviving population.”

“How did that happen? There must have been more in the past,” Bradford said.

“Self-inflicted population crash. A tragedy we have seen many times,” Leonard said. “Two factions with antithetical views—about whether their species’ psi powers should be augmented or extinguished, in this case—an arms race, a series of increasingly desperate and destructive wars, and ultimately ecological catastrophe. Less than two hundred survivors, belonging to a single group mind. They were lucky; they were on a self-sustaining space habitat, equipped with a drive that could get them to their nearest stellar neighbor in a couple hundred years.”

“So they were already ‘on the precipice of extinction’ before they even left their home star system.”

“That’s right. Their history since then—roughly three thousand Earth years—has been one long, obsessive search for another species with enough native psi ability to host their group mind, while maintaining enough genetic diversity to be viable long-term.” A green line extended from the Ethereals’ homeworld to touch another star, and then another, and another. “These are the inhabited systems that they’ve visited since.”

“They didn’t try to conquer these worlds,” Tohru said. “They seem to have abducted a few individuals from each, experimented on them, concluded that the species did not have the necessary qualities, and moved on. But they used those individuals as templates for their servitors, the ones you have actually fought.”

“So that’s why they’re all clones,” Bradford said. “We thought that was fishy.”

“They also copied technology when they could,” Alan said. “The faster-than-light drive they use was developed by the people you know as the Sectoids, along with some other time-related tricks… which brings us to the _other_ worm in this can.”

The hologram changed to show a slowly rotating fractal tree of light, thousands of spindly branches without leaves. “This is a 3D projection of the causal sheaf containing your universe,” Alan said. “We’re only including timelines where the invasion did occur, which is why there’s almost no variation at the bottom: where it starts branching, that’s when the invasion starts. What do you notice about the branches?”

“…They all loop back on themselves?” Bradford said. “Except that one there.”

“That’s right. From an exterior perspective, this isn’t a normal sheaf, it’s a _single timeline_ that has repeatedly reset to just before the invasion happened—or I should say it’s _been_ reset. This cannot occur naturally.”

“We _beat_ them,” Durand said, bitterly. “And they wound time back and tried again. Over and over again until they got their victory…”

“Exactly. There are two hinge points,” Alan said. “Either XCOM successfully repels the invasion, or you turn to guerilla warfare after an initial defeat, and throw off the yoke about twenty years later; either way, the timeline gets reset just afterward. The current iteration—the one you come from—is just past the first hinge, and there’s no reason to think it would go differently. You _can_ take your planet back, starting from where you are. But that wouldn’t break the loop.”

“Shouldn’t the Hounds of Tindalos be after them for this?” Clarence asked.

“Oh, but they _are_ ,” Alan said. “That’s why there are now only fifty Ethereals, not two hundred.”

“Hounds of what now?” Bradford said.

“Tindalos,” Clarence said. “All anyone really knows about them is, if you fuck with causality too much, they hunt you down in your own past and eat you.”

“Oh God, that’s what they’re terrified of,” Durand said. “The fragments I got make sense now. And it’s only their enemy because they keep restarting the invasion of Earth because they’re terrified of this enemy.”

“Yep. Typical for a time war, really,” Alan said. “Probably on iteration one it was just that they couldn’t bear to be fought off by the species that finally had what they wanted, but with every reset the Hounds get angrier and the Ethereals get even more desperate.”

“I always wondered what the cosmos would do if someone managed to hold off the Hounds,” Clarence said. “I guess it dumps the problem on us, and then we dump it on you?”

Alan, Leonard, and Tohru looked at each other, and they all shrugged. “That _is_ the Martian High Commissioner’s job description.”

“And knowing the Martian High Commissioner,” Clarence said, “I’m guessing you’ve got an idea.”

* * *

> ADVENT Temporary Planetary Coordination Center, Pune, India  
>  Universe 1525-Gollop-219  
>  Epicycle 3.02 of Local Year 52 of Great Cycle 8 Since Catastrophe (CE 2015.07.10)

“Advisor, your ten-thirty appointment is Mr. Leonard Neeble of Ares Macrotechnology, his company wants to participate in the technology transfer program.”

At this stage, it had been found useful to permit the humans to think they were still in charge of their planet. It was psychologically important to them. The Ethereals could even sympathize; in their oldest memories, they had once had a similar…attachment to their own homeworld.

Thus, “Advisor” for the representative of the group mind that, in fact, ruled the planet. Thus, also, technology transfer. It didn’t directly advance the Plan, but it helped to defend against the guerilla uprising that would inevitably come. Memories of previous iterations were quite clear on that.

(It was peculiar how some humans were willing, even eager, to cooperate, and others would rather die than consider it. It was almost as if there were two subspecies … but their genetics showed no such thing.)

The Ethereals stood up behind the Advisor’s desk as the human entered the room, and extended an upper right arm for a “handshake.” Sometimes humans recoiled from this attempt to mimic their greeting, but this one carried through the ritual as if he saw nothing out of the ordinary. (The memories indicated this one was probably a “he,” at least going by the clothes and the name.)

“Thank you for taking the time to meet with me,” the human said. “My organization does civil and structural engineering, among other things, and we’re very interested in the advanced materials you mentioned in the announcement. But this conversation isn’t about the technology, eh? That’s for the engineers to discuss, later. You wanted to meet me in person because you want to know if you can trust me and mine, and I can’t say I blame you, what with your having conquered the planet. I’m sure there are humans who are still trying to fight. Me, I’m prepared to bury the hatchet…but there _is_ one thing I would like to ask of you first, just to ease my mind.”

Without pausing, the human slapped a fat three-ring binder down on the desk. “This is a comprehensive list of every human who has gone missing during or since the invasion and remains unaccounted for, with sufficient information to identify them or their remains, and their last known location,” he said. “I am asking you, in your official capacity as the planetary government, to disclose everything you know about what happened to every one of them, keeping no secrets.”

The memories warned the Ethereals to err on the side of assuming humans were not joking when they said things like this, even if it seemed that they must be. They made a show of paging through the binder. “We understand your concern, and we will start an investigation into the whereabouts of these humans,” they said. “However, your request that we keep no secrets is unreasonable. Some of the information we have about them may relate to ongoing projects that remain classified.”

“We all have our secrets,” the human said, “but those projects you mention…” he put his hands down on the edge of the desk, leaned forward and stared the Advisor right in the eyes. “ _I already know about them._ I know you are experimenting on us. I know _why_ you are experimenting on us. I know what you want to achieve, and I know what you’re running from. And I know you can read my mind, so you go right ahead and see for yourself that I’m telling you the truth.”

Hearing these words, the Ethereals were startled to realize that they _weren’t_ reading the human’s mind. Normally they would have known his deepest secrets the moment he walked through the door, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to them this time? No matter, they would do it now…

* * *

_Flash._ The psi testing lab used during the invasion.

 _Flash._ The _old_ psi testing lab, used _before_ the invasion.

 _Flash._ A cargo train stacked high with stasis tubes, each holding a human body.

(…Are we in control of this probe? We didn’t think any humans had this level of skill… can we get anything but these images?)

 _Flash._ The secret genetic lab in an industrial district of Kashgar where this iteration’s variations on human-hybrid clone-soldiers were being developed.

(No, we can’t… can we _stop?_ )

 _Flash._ The even more secret genetic lab where this iteration’s AVATAR project was just beginning.

(No…)

 _Flash._ The production facility for Sectoids.

(That’s on the fourth planet! How could this human have found out about that?!)

 _Flash._ The production facility for human-hybrids.

(That hasn’t even begun construction yet in this iteration!)

(Do they know about the temporal safeguard?)

 _Flash._ The jumble of rocks on the fourth large moon of the fifth planet that concealed the temporal safeguard. Untouched, apparently, but if the human knew the significance of this location—and why else would he include it in this tour of the Ethereals’ deepest secrets—

 _Flash._ An exterior view of the Ethereals’ habitat ship, which had never in this iteration decloaked anywhere within the humans’ star system.

 _Flash_. An _interior_ view, as a starveling creature of long bones and impossible angles materialized out of the intersection of two power conduits to pounce on a Muton patrol.

(They know everything. They even know of the enemy beyond time. _How can they know?_ )

 _Flash._ The Ethereals, all of them, were standing on a featureless white square under a dome of swirling purple chaos. If there was anything beyond, or underneath, the square it was not visible. The human Leonard Neeble was standing a short distance away. As they noticed him, eight more humans appeared next to him. Two of these additional humans, the Ethereals recognized.

“This is a mental space constructed by me,” Neeble said. His voice had changed—not something the Ethereals usually paid attention to, but the eerie, authoritative echo that they now heard demanded attention. “I was not entirely truthful earlier. Ares Macrotechnology has no need of your advanced materials, I am not a native of the Earth you are familiar with, and my name is Rolzup. I am the Martian High Commissioner.”

“I am Alan Mendelsohn, and this is Honda Tohru. We are Rolzup’s assistants,” one of the unfamiliar humans said. “Also with us are John Bradford and Annette Durand, whom I believe you already know, representing the aboriginal population of this solar system, and Clarence Yojimbo, Gunnar Ramirez, Anka Kovacs, and Iris Gwagwa, representing no one in particular.”

“We have brought you here to discuss an end to your hostile occupation of this solar system,” Rolzup said, “and also your exceedingly ill-advised repetitive resetting of the local timeline.”

“Clearly there is no use in deception,” the Advisor said for the group mind. “We knew you were capable of this, it is why we came and why we stay. You have plumbed every one of our secrets. You know why you are our last hope, and yet you deny us what we need…”

“We have defeated you—what was it you said, Rolzup? Two million times?” Bradford said. Rolzup nodded.

“I _told_ you why—I suppose I must have told you two million times,” Durand said. “You offered me all your power and knowledge, if only I would become you… and cease to be myself.”

“We have a saying,” the human introduced as Clarence Yojimbo said. “It is insane to repeat the same actions and expect a different outcome.”

“What choice do we have?” the Advisor said. “We tested so many other species. None had humanity’s potential.”

“You tested _six_ species,” Alan said. “We estimate there are at least ten million other sentient or pre-sentient species with compatible biology in this galaxy. If the chances of their developing psi ability equivalent to yours and humans’ are one in six…”

“Six were all we found in eight great cycles! You cannot seriously expect us to give up on our only hope in all that time—”

“ _Do you realize that you could have avoided this conflict?_ ” Rolzup interrupted. “Do you realize that the humans would have helped you _willingly_ , if you had come in peace and asked honestly for their aid? There are seven billion people on this Earth, and some _would_ have given up their identity for what you offer. Many more would have donated their genes to reconstruct your species.”

“But now it’s too late for that,” Bradford said. “Instead of our best nature, you have earned our worst: our xenophobia, our militarism, and our implacability. Even if you stood down now, turned the planet back over to us and abandoned your experiments, there would still be those of us who would continue the fight until you were all dead.”

“Not to mention that if you hadn’t reset time,” Clarence said, “you would not now be _hunted_ through time by the enforcers of causality. At this point, they too might not be willing to stop until you’re all dead.”

“Is that your sentence, then?” the Advisor said slowly. “No future for the last of the Ethereal Ones, only this bitter end?”

“Mars has never let an intelligent species go extinct when we could do anything about it,” Rolzup said, “and we aren’t about to give up on you either, even if some might call it justice.”

“We can find you a new home,” Tohru said, “and we can put you in touch with another species that will help you reconstruct your genome—again, if you ask honestly. But you have to leave, and I don’t just mean leave Earth, I mean leave this universe. It’s the only way you can escape the Hounds.”

* * *

> Alan Mendelsohn’s personal starship _Teapot, Forever Voyaging_ , lunar orbit  
>  Universe 1525-Gollop-219  
>  CE 2015.07.11

Seated in large, comfortable chairs in the forward observation lounge, Bradford, Durand, and Tohru watched as the Ethereals loaded their invasion fleet back into their mothership / space habitat. A Martian “intercontinual tugboat” was already in position. The only things they weren’t taking with them were the temporal safeguard, which the Martians would be removing for safe disposal, and all their materiel on Earth, which was to be left behind as war reparations, technology and exotic substances more valuable than anything else they could have offered.

“We still have a big mess to clean up,” Bradford said after a while.

“What do you think is most likely to happen next?” Tohru said. She wasn’t speaking as Rolzup, but Bradford had no doubt the collective mind was present.

“ADVENT, the collaborators, they’re ruling the world as a puppet government,” Bradford said. “Probably they’ll try to _keep_ ruling the world once they realize no one’s pulling their strings anymore. I don’t think we should let that happen.”

“And they especially mustn’t be allowed to continue any of the aliens’ genetic experiments,” Durand said.

“You won’t be able to snap back to the status quo ante, though,” Tohru said. “An awful lot of the people who used to be in charge are dead, or else they signed up with ADVENT.”

“Right. And all the internal conflicts are going to come roaring back, too,” Bradford said. “I was hoping Mars might be willing to act as a caretaker government for a couple years, you know, make sure nobody starves to death, keep the peace, prosecute war crimes.”

“It won’t fly,” Tohru said. “We look human, Leonard and I were even born on Earth, but we’re as alien as they are. Maybe more.” She waved out the window at the invasion fleet. “We won’t be trusted. This part, it’s got to be seen to be Earthlings from top to bottom.”

“There’s no way we can do this just the two of us,” Durand said.

“We can help, it’s just got to be behind the scenes,” Tohru said. “Hang on, too many conversations at once…” she shut her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again, it was Rolzup behind them.

“We’ve decided we can safely pull some time shenanigans of our own,” Rolzup said. “We’ll find and extract every survivor of XCOM and everyone else you want, effectively right now, and we’ll lend you a training base for as long as you need. When you’re good and ready you go _back_ to right now, decapitate ADVENT in a big flashy show so everyone knows the aliens are gone, and then take over its structure for your caretaker government. After that, we can chip in quietly with food and other supplies as necessary. Sound good?”

“Also, Clarence says he will stick around and help you and any other psykers get a better handle on your abilities,” Alan added, sticking his head through the doorway.

“We never found them, but Durand, you said there _were_ others?” Bradford said.

“Yes, at least three in the lab where I was held, and I doubt it was the only one,” Durand said.

“Anyone who’s still alive as of now, we will find them,” Rolzup said.

“But what I really came in here to tell you was, they’re done loading up,” Alan said.

Everyone turned back to the windows to watch as, outside, without any fuss, the intercontinual tugboat hauled the Ethereals out of the universe.


End file.
